We have pretty great tasting well-water, nice minerals, kinda sweet. BUT HARD. While it made great tea it was a nightmare for kettles and most teaware due to crazy amounts of scale build up. However since using the graviTea, I have not had to descale once, and we are talking several years.

Tea still tastes great, though I have never done side by side testing.

Great TD began with Takumi from Zencha with the Mrs. Next up, a tasting of Yame Fukamushi from Xell. And finished up with a prelim tasting of Kabuse from O-Cha. These are all sencha from OTTI 11.

Herb_Master wrote:Mainly Brita but sometimes Charcoal and very Occasionally bottled.

Hi Herb.

Did you ever try softening your filtered water by put it through your Shigaraki? Maybe it was Ambrose who was doing that?

I am finishing my last 6.5 grams of 2010 Hojo Shi Feng this morning. It is delicious but unfortunately has lost its intense creamy finish nine months after having opened it. Probably more shuppin sencha (I always want to append an apostrophe to shuppin) after lunch.

My taste sense was not up to Hojo's water tests. The Shigaraki did not improve my Dan Cong when compared to Imen's expensive Chao Zhou pots, nor to the cheap Zisha pots from Zen 8 tea.

I feel that softening the water is not what is required for Dan Cong, in fact Imen has been known to recommend Harder Water, so maybe I should try the Shigaraki on something other than Dan Cong.

I have tried a local bottled water from Buxton which seems to meet Imen's requirements and it performs better (for DC) than bottled French mineral waters, but my local tap water with the Chlorine and Fluorine removed by Brita (that comes from similar geographical region to Buxton) is as good as the bottled water and gives me great results.

The Shigaraki sits waiting to find a perfect tea partner. Maybe I will try it with Sheng